1. The Seven Years’ War broke out over
a. contested land in Massachusetts.
b. contested land in the Ohio Valley.
c. religious differences.
d. trade policies.
The answer is b. The Ohio Valley was a highly contested area, claimed by Virginian land speculators, Pennsylvania traders, the French, and the resident Indians. The competition between these various groups sparked the war, which ended up drawing in many European countries and their Caribbean possessions.
2. The Albany Plan of Union proposed a unified
a. but limited government to coordinate defense and Indian affairs.
b. and powerful government to coordinate defense and Indian affairs.
c. but limited government to enforce British laws.
d. and powerful government to enforce British laws.
The answer is a. The Albany Plan of Union called for a royally appointed president general who would meet annually with a grand council composed of forty–eight representatives. They would consider questions of war, peace, and trade with Indians.
3. The person responsible for turning the Seven Years’ War in Britain’s favor was
a. Edward Braddock.
b. William Pitt.
c. George Washington.
d. William Johnson.
The answer is b. William Pitt became Britain’s prime minister in 1757 and committed massive resources to fight France and Spain worldwide. In America, British and American soldiers used these resources to capture Forts Duquesne, Niagara, and Ticonderoga and then the French cities of Quebec and Montreal.
4. Following the war, colonists complained that the British military
a. had refused to pay off debts incurred over the course of the war.
b. had been unexpectedly cowardly and ineffectual in battle.
c. had been disdainful of and abusive toward American colonial soldiers.
d. had helped protract the war by way of illegal trading with the French.
The answer is c. Colonists accused the British of relegating American soldiers to grunt work as well as subjecting them to surprisingly harsh military discipline, including floggings for relatively minor offenses.
5. The Sugar Act tried to end the illegal importation of French molasses directly into the colonies by
a. threatening French merchants with stiffer penalties.
b. raising the duty on French molasses.
c. lowering the duty on French molasses.
d. banning the importation of French molasses outright.
The answer is c. George Grenville designed the Sugar Act to raise revenue by lowering the duty on French molasses. He hoped this would encourage shippers to comply with the law, which they had long ignored. The act also laid out more stringent policies for investigating and prosecuting smugglers.
6. The Stamp Act differed from earlier legislative efforts to raise revenue because it was
a. a trade regulation.
b. imposed by Parliament.
c. created by the colonial legislatures.
d. openly designed to raise money.
The answer is d. Previously, the few taxes the British levied on the colonies dealt with the regulation of trade: Colonists paid customs duties, import taxes, and similar sorts of fees. The Stamp Act, however, had nothing to do with trade. Its sole purpose was to raise revenue for the government, and some colonists felt that through it Parliament had brazenly taken away the colonists’ right to tax themselves.
7. Grenville ordered that local stamp distributors be hired at a generous salary, thereby
a. attracting the most qualified workers.
b. providing an incentive to overcome the risks of enforcing the act.
c. ensuring colonists’ full cooperation and allegiance.
d. saving the crown the cost of sending stamp distributors all the way from Britain.
The answer is b. Grenville was no fool; anticipating that the stamp tax would be unpopular, he delegated the administration of the act to Americans to avoid the problem of hostility to British enforcers. In each colony, local stamp distributors would be hired at a handsome salary of 8 percent of the revenue collected.
8. Local communities decided that the most effective way to protest the Stamp Act was to
a. create their own stamp to cover the royal stamp on taxed paper.
b. refuse to use paper at all.
c. prevent the distribution of stamped paper.
d. bribe the stamp distributors.
The answer is c. Defying the law by doing business on unstamped paper ran the risk of fines or jail time; not using paper was inconvenient and would cause newspapers, the legal system, and trade to grind to a halt. Cutting off the supply of stamped paper before the law went into effect ensured universal noncompliance without undermining business; this was accomplished through intimidation of the stamp distributors rather than through bribery.
9. The Townshend duties imposed by the Revenue Act of 1767 were unpopular because they
a. embodied the idea of taxation through trade duties.
b. were extremely burdensome.
c. made tea and sugar very expensive.
d. were internal taxes.
The answer is a. The Townshend duties were not especially burdensome, but in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis, colonists no longer recognized a distinction between internal and external taxes if the external tax was designed solely to raise money. Regardless of how limited the impact of the tax might be, colonists felt that it represented an attempt on the part of Parliament to subvert colonial rights to representation.
10. One especially controversial aspect of the Townshend duties was that some of the revenue would
a. support members of Parliament.
b. go directly to the king.
c. pay the salaries of stamp distributors.
d. pay the salaries of royal governors.
The answer is d. Colonial assemblies traditionally set the salaries of their own officials, a practice that gave them a great deal of leverage over royal appointees. Providing governors with a source of income separate from the legislatures was a way of increasing the governors’ power and independence.
11. Lord Hillsborough ordered Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard to dissolve the Massachusetts assembly because
a. it refused to authorize the lodging of British troops in Massachusetts homes.
b. it refused to repudiate Samuel Adams’s denunciation of the Townshend duties.
c. its members were suspected of participating in the annual celebrations of the Stamp Act riot.
d. it denounced the power of the crown.
The answer is b. Samuel Adams, a Boston member of the Massachusetts assembly, protested the Townshend duties as unjust parliamentary taxation and denounced the provision for paying governors’ salaries. The Massachusetts assembly circulated a letter with Adams’s arguments to other colonial assemblies to cultivate agreement and support. Lord Hillsborough, in charge of colonial affairs, demanded that the Massachusetts assembly repudiate the letter. When they refused, Governor Bernard carried out Hillsborough’s order to dissolve the assembly.
12. In the fall of 1768, three thousand British troops occupied Boston because
a. of the nonimportation agreements.
b. there were threats against the royal governor’s life.
c. of demonstrations revealing strong anti–British sentiment in Boston.
d. Indians were mounting attacks on the surrounding countryside.
The answer is c. After a boisterous celebration of the demonstrations against the Stamp Act, Governor Francis Bernard and Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson realized that they had no police and no ability to command the town’s militia. The only way they saw to maintain order was to bring in British soldiers.
13. Around the time of the Boston Massacre, the new British prime minister, Frederick North, recommended
a. reimposing the Stamp Act.
b. repealing the Townshend duties.
c. taxing coffee.
d. stricter enforcement of the Townshend duties.
The answer is b. An able politician, Lord North wanted peace with the colonies and prosperity for British merchants. He believed that the decrease in trade caused by the duties was not worth the revenue. All Townshend duties with the exception of the tax on tea were removed, a reminder of Parliament’s ultimate power and an attempt to cool tensions without sacrificing principles.
14. The British handling of the Gaspée incident had the unintended effect of
a. creating semi–official links among the colonial governments.
b. disrupting relations between colonial governments.
c. encouraging smugglers to resist capture.
d. reducing smuggling activity along the American coast.
The answer is a. Virginia’s legislature was so dismayed by the British threat to remove suspects to Britain that it proposed the creation of a network of standing committees to link the colonies and pass along alarming news. By mid–1773, every colonial assembly except Pennsylvania’s had a committee of correspondence for this purpose.
15. The Quebec Act upset colonists because it
a. returned the city to the French.
b. was seen as an affront to New Englanders.
c. overturned the city’s French civil law.
d. established new colonial taxes.
The answer is b. The Quebec Act allowed French civil law, French government form, and Catholicism to continue in Quebec. To Protestant New Englanders, who recently had been denied their own representative government, the move seemed like a deliberate insult.
16. The delegates to the First Continental Congress were
a. uniformly interested in provoking a crisis with Britain.
b. unable to agree on a declaration of rights.
c. unified in their ideas about how to respond to the Coercive Acts.
d. of different minds about how to respond to the Coercive Acts.
The answer is d. The Continental Congress included delegates with a range of opinions. Some were ardent patriots, while others were not enthusiastic about worsening the crisis with Britain; they did not agree exactly on how they should respond to the problems with the imperial government. However, most of them were well–known leaders of the anti–British cause in their communities.
17. When armed confrontation broke out in Massachusetts, Thomas Gage, military commander and the new royal governor,
a. had the leading troublemakers arrested and shipped to Nova Scotia to face trial.
b. requested more soldiers and advised repeal of the Coercive Acts.
c. dismissed it as a minor domestic insurrection that could easily be suppressed.
d. misidentified it as a dispute between local factions that British authorities need not be concerned with.
The answer is b. Gage could see that a rebellious spirit was widespread among the colonists and not just situated among a small “Boston rabble,” and so he asked Britain to send him twenty thousand more soldiers. He also strongly advocated a repeal of the Coercive Acts, but British leaders rejected the idea.
18. Over the winter of 1774–1775, pessimistic Americans who were unhappy with the Coercive Acts and the British presence in Boston
a. agitated against further boycotts.
b. joined the British army.
c. accumulated arms and ammunition.
d. left the colonies.
The answer is c. Some Americans counted on the effectiveness of the trade boycotts and the eventual repeal of the Coercive Acts. The more pessimistic Americans, however, saw no alternative to armed confrontation to protect their homes and their traditional liberties.
19. A 1773 book of poems by Phillis Wheatley, a Boston slave, caused
a. slave uprisings in North Carolina.
b. Wheatley’s master to free her.
c. widespread recognition of the hypocrisy of patriot slave owners.
d. Thomas Gage to promise to free any slaves who would fight for the British.
The answer is b. Wheatley’s book of poems, which spoke of the desire for freedom held by Africans enslaved in the colonies, brought her international recognition. At the urging of his wife, Wheatley’s master decided to free the young poet in 1775.
20. Black slaves who fled to the British army during the Revolutionary War were
a. sent back to their masters.
b. generally used as menial labor.
c. almost always recaptured by their owners.
d. all employed as soldiers.
The answer is b. Thousands of blacks gained freedom as a result of their service in the British army. However, the British mostly used them as menial laborers, and epidemics of disease took a terrible toll on runaways’ encampments.
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